The Battle of Abraham

All too often medical diagnosis [of historical figures] is used to end, rather
than begin, a conversation,” writes Joshua Wolf Shenk in Lincoln’s
Melancholy. But such diagnosis, he adds, is “no substitute for knowing
how the individual figures, and the communities they lived in, understood themselves.”

An independent scholar whose work has appeared in such magazines as Harper’s, The
Atlantic, and The New Yorker, Shenk spent seven years researching
primary sources—Lincoln’s letters and speeches, the journals
and letters of people who knew him, oral histories—as well as the condition
of depression as seen in the past and today. He found a man who had clearly
suffered from major, chronic depression but had accepted it, learned to cope
with its debilitating effects, and used it to live a satisfying, purposeful
life.

Shenk considers the story of Lincoln’s depression especially important
today, when nearly a million people worldwide commit suicide annually, because
it “illuminates not only the nature of suffering but also the way it
can become part of a productive life.” Today, we consider depression
a mental illness that automatically unfits someone for living well unless it
is eradicated by medical treatment.

But in Lincoln’s day, “melancholy” was seen as one of several
temperaments, each with its assets and drawbacks. Melancholics might have been
especially vulnerable to inexplicable sadness, which could certainly spiral
into illness, but also had potential for great wisdom and creativity. All of
Lincoln’s acquaintances recognized his melancholy; none considered it
a reason to distrust or despise him.

Man Most Miserable

Shenk lays out three main phases of Lincoln’s melancholy, which he
calls “fear,” “engagement,” and “transcendence.” Lincoln
suffered two major breakdowns as a young man, and in this first period refused
to carry a pocket-knife for fear of harming himself. He once described himself
as “the most miserable man living,” adding, “I must die or
be better.”

But around 1841, Lincoln entered into a phase Shenk calls “engagement”:
He accepted his depression and began seeking both ways and a reason to live.
Certain techniques helped him cope: He was well known as an adept joke and
story teller, once telling a White House visitor, “If I couldn’t
tell these stories, I would die.” He also found an outlet in reading
and writing poetry, quoting melancholic poems, and putting into verse stories
of suicide and his own emotional distress.

During this period, after much consideration, Lincoln embraced a religious
faith that sustained him the rest of his life. His determination to live and
to believe culminated in a clear purpose: the desire to “impress himself
upon [the day’s events] as to link his name with something that would
redound to the interest of his fellow man.”

Lincoln specifically pursued this desire to be of service through his battle
to reject the extension of slavery and maintain the Union. He made this choice
not for personal gain, but according to a deep sense of having been chosen, placed
in that moment in history with “‘so vast and so sacred a trust’ that
he felt that he had no moral right to shrink; nor even to count the chances
of his own life, in what might follow.”

Lincoln’s melancholy “lent him clarity, discipline, and faith
in hard times.” Learning to live with it made him see both himself and
the world around him clearly, especially the inescapable pain, but also the
possibilities of alleviating at least some of that pain. And “the ethic
that he proposed for his country—continued struggle to realize an ideal,
knowing that it could never be perfectly attained—was the same ethic
he had used to govern himself.”

When a friend once came to see him at the White House, for example, Lincoln
appeared in the depths of despair. Yet the friend found him writing, working
at his chosen purpose—to help “guide his nation through its immediate
struggle” to a new unity. Because he had come to see suffering “as
a potential catalyst for emotional growth,” he could also see it as a
catalyst for national growth.

Purpose based on faith: this was the key to the final stage of Lincoln’s
melancholy, as he transcended suffering, self, and the present to work towards “the
chance to effect something meaningful and lasting.”

From Suffering, Hope

Lincoln’s Melancholy, Shenk emphasizes, is “a story,
not a theory or a principle or a program.” He offers it as a story of
hope: Here was a man who suffered greatly and yet lived well, not despite that
suffering but at least in part because of it. “The hope is
not that suffering will ever go away,” Shenk writes. “The hope
is that suffering, plainly acknowledged and endured, can fit us for the surprising
challenges that await.”

For Christians living in a culture in which “anything short of constant
cheer [is] perceived as a violation of the American religion,” Lincoln’s
Melancholy serves as a vivid reminder of what Scripture teaches us: “We
rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance
produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3–4).

Beth Impson is Professor of English at Bryan College (named for
William Jennings Bryan) in Dayton, Tennessee, and the author of Called to Womanhood (Crossway). She and her husband have five
children and eleven grandchildren and attend Grace Bible Church.

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